


Let's light that city like the motherfucking sun

by Kyle0beez



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Niki | Nihachu, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Depressed TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Everyone Has Issues, Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Family Dynamics, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Heavy Angst, I take too much time to upload, Near Death Experiences, Niki POV, Niki | Nihachu Needs a Hug, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sick TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Techno is a pig, Technoblade Has ADHD (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade Hears Voices (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade Protects TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), They'll be okay, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, no respawn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28600176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyle0beez/pseuds/Kyle0beez
Summary: Tommy was a cold representation of anger. Still, it was a snowstorm. Tommy was kind in his own way, loving and very, very loyal. In such a way that the adults believed that his dedication would lead him to decline. But she and Wilbur thought that was what allowed him to keep going up. Tommy would conquer the world with sweat on his forehead and dirt in his hands, and he would still stand proudly on a stage. On his own podium.Niki finds Tommy in exile. Burned, small and sick. Then fire burn inside her.
Relationships: ALL PLATONIC, Niki | Nihachu & Technoblade, Niki | Nihachu & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 372





	1. Like a dog that feels a tsunami, she barks

**Author's Note:**

> (Song "I'll be The Vilain" By: Ian Has Opnions)

Niki passes through the Nether portal and is met with rain and smoke.

She isn’t surprised, much less amazed, she managed to hear explosion sounds from far away in L'manburg. Senses trained unconsciously to smell the suffocating gas from the ember and the unquestionable sound of a catastrophe. Niki soberly feels the sensation of fire, which burns her skin begging to come out as magma begs for freedom below the crust.

Like a dog that feels a tsunami, she barks. She lets the burning sensation come out like an angry grunt, her fingers drumming on the bakery counter. Suddenly the rain in L'manburg is too overwhelming. It remains difficult to find memories of when it was not.

The sound of the storm does not erase the constant TNT noises, it is almost like a fabrication as if Niki were entering a distant memory; where her best friend lived long enough to die as a villain. She can almost feel Wilbur's hot gaze, a different fire inside him. Red — Niki had never noticed how red her eyes were before, she was always content with the brown caramel tart, never questioning the veracity of the memories, but today, she can count in each memory the red iris, almost a message, a premonition who he would become.

But she was. The sound goes a long way to be a memory. It's too real.

Niki holds the sword in a fist, her knuckles turn white, but she doesn't feel the force in which she holds the hilt, the enchanted sword that she never leaves out of sight. The flashy bright blue, and even though she had stuff for something better, she was never known for not clinging to the things she likes.

He refuses to call himself paranoid. She’s not like Wilbur, who looked at everyone expecting a stab in the back, no, she was waiting for the next blow she’d receive. Waiting when she’d pass through the streets of L'manburg and be triggered again, another war waiting for her. But Niki would no longer be caught unprotected, never again that way. Niki would never again be considered naive.

She was never a threat, after all.

(A part of her wanted it to be. Dry ember begging to burn on her skin. For a moment, she wanted it to be her in the whispers of the people. _Technoblade, Technoblade, Technoblade.)_

Niki leaves. She leaves the bakery door open because she knows that Fundy or Ranboo would look for food sooner or later. Or they would come for her, seeking comfort, or even worry being extracted from the veins.

They don't have things to protect. Her home — the bakery, her comfort, was taken from her and left without ash.

Then she finds herself at the breaking point, where she clings to anything that makes her feel pulsating love again, not the numb feeling of exhaustion after a day. Niki feels that she is holding L'manburg like a cat holding a string of string. It is not enough, but she tries to hold on to gentle times.

(What was the day L'manburg was kind? A part of her wonders and Niki shivers)

She knows how tiring it’s for Fundy — because of the flushed skin or how low her ears look, or how the sclera of her eyes is stained red without opacity — the lack of family. From a stable company. Niki is happy to be able to propose this to him, to the child he saw growing up in. Niki silently likes the mention of Wilbur, the same childish fanaticism, even though Fundy is fourteen now (thirteen and a half, but Fundy is happier feeling older, and she won't take that away from him), she likes how his eyes shine when he repeats Will's phrases, or as he reads the Declaration of Independence as one of the best books ever written. She laughs when Fundy sings Wilbur's words with enthusiasm and pride. That good Wilbur, when he was really Will.

She hides part of it that Fundy doesn't need to remember. About the records, about the duel, about Wilbur's pain of betrayal weighing on his back, always a paranoid tendency hidden beneath the gestures. And the way she was summoned to stand beside Wilbur when his younger brother had a sash wrapped around his arrow-pierced chest.

Just as she loves Fundy's idolatry, she celebrates Ranboo's naivete. Or how he likes to hear the stories. Niki prays that, even though Ranboo already knew the suffocating truth, he would cling more to the fantastical stories of a hero fighting tyranny. Not real failed life.

Not that Wilbur that begged to die in the arms of the person who arrived too late. No. But Wilbur has held a pen and a book as if he were going to save the world. That saw the future. Who stated with glory and passion that they were on the right side of history.

Still, she resists the urge to leave a message when she sheaths the sword on her hip. A Netherite helmet that she forgot to take off when she left.

(or she just doesn't want to, she doesn't mind receiving a rebuke from Tubbo, not when the child doesn't leave his office. She misses holding Tubbo in her arms, saying that she is by his side forever. Hugging him as if that was what the world needed, healing slightly from a scar. But it was Tubbo himself who destroyed the chain.)

She arrives in L'manburg and walks along the wooden paths that Tubbo built, a small slum on the margins of the nation. And despite the events, Niki sees Tubbo as a hard-working president. Tubbo is dedicated, he doesn't care about greatness, he just seeks peace. A utopia of sunrays licking his face like a calm flame. Not the one that burns and hurts. Not fireworks.

It doesn't mean that he doesn't have to make sacrifices for it.

Tubbo isn’t a tyrant. He’s unlike anything that J. Schlatt has ever been. He has unconditional love for L'manburg.

But she still has the memory of the cold look, anger, rain coating her pupils. The storm inside that little child who was forced to make such a big decision. Children shouldn’t fight for independence, for the right to persist. But in the same way, what’d a government do differently? Niki almost hears Technoblade's voice.

She tries to convince herself that L'manburg was not a stupid mistake by a mind that has lost its values.

Niki's boots soaked with water. The rain spreads and separates, falling between the gaps in the dark wood. She slaps her boots on the floor, waiting for the discomfort of her wet socks to wear off. It hadn't rained like that in L'manburg in years, Niki remembers. It shudders with a gust of cold wind and the sound of thunder and lightning in the black sky. A warning. It's like a warning.

Niki supports his wet back on one of the posters. The wanted poster causing affliction in a nation — although Niki believes that the war criminal needs to be heard much more than muffled. It provokes her. The posters are wet, but the paper is sturdy. Quackity made the warnings. The buzz in the mouth of the people. It doesn't matter what decade. For different reasons, different names.

Criminal. Killer. Traitor. God.

Technoblade, Technoblade, Technoblade, Technoblade, her brain buzzes. Niki is ready for a migraine.

L'manburg’s quiet, however. It was never meant to be this way. L'manburg was created by words. There should be screams in the streets, genuine happiness seeping from the walls.

But the memory remains hot.

Niki watched as Tubbo lost the remainder of genuine goodness from within the soul. Especially when he gives in to the pressure of a broken government that was left to him as a gift. He decides that a stable land below his feet is more valid than the moral that put him in that position. He gives in.

Tubbo would do never let Tommy go as a consequence, as a punishment. But a President do.

 **The Government is a cruel figure.** Niki maintains. The idea of having to obey a greater power to respond to a request — begging — for freedom.

(L'manburg can be independent but L'manburg can't be free.)

Tyranny is right, after all. They have never been a greater power.

From Tommy's look, Niki thinks he agrees. Tommy is silent, he doesn't scream, scoff or show any anger.

Niki thinks L'manburg's words didn't die with Wilbur. But they left with Tommy.

Tommy looks at Tubbo, Fundy's indignant murmurs, and Quackity's gasping sighs. But Tubbo doesn't waver. Dream's dark smile isn’t enough to make him return — to take a child's selfish attitude. Tubbo was no longer a child — but it was enough to make Niki tremble like a worn leaf. Dream holds Tommy by the shoulder, the lights go out, or Niki just suddenly feels very sick.

Tommy puts on Wilbur's patched overcoat. Niki remembers having sewed it a thousand times and, unlike anything she deduced, she doesn't cry. A hole is formed in the stomach. Her brain buzzes, her skin burns, but Niki doesn't move.

Tommy leaves. Her brother's ghost hung like an obsessor. The overcoat still has a tear and blood on its back. The coat representing everything Wilbur ever was.

Tommy always wanted to be like Wilbur. She doesn't want him to be like Wilbur.

Tommy has been gone for two months. Five since Wilbur killed himself in the war. And she still smells of smoke.

"Nice afternoon, isn't it?"

Oh, yeah. The smoke.

She shivers. The voice isn’t resounding, nor hoarse. Niki has memories of the wheezing laugh. But not everyone who looks good is a good person. Niki recognizes the tone and accent, from miles away.

_I don't give a fuck about Spirit._

"Dream," she replies. Crude calm in the words. Low. Pale. Her arms burn like fire when she touches them. She swallows. Anger doesn't get her anywhere.

 _'It is the only thing I have.'_ Tommy replies, somewhere in his consciousness.

"Niki." it arises from raindrops, passing over the catwalk. Always mysterious and flashy. Chaotic, if she can tell. “I missed the rain. Don’t ya?"

"Mm." She mumbles. "Not actually. It's still hot.”

“Well, we live on a coast. It‘s the first time that it snows in L'manburg.” Dream laughs.

She admits. She hates Dream. Its territorialist arrogance. Its thirst for chaos and content. Niki was never a chess piece.

She looks at him through peripheral vision. His green sweatshirt is torn, but it doesn't look like the results of a fight, but an accident. It looked like a result. The glove on his hand had been lost, the palm was covered with scars, but Niki automatically noticed the soot. Natural coal shattered between fingers. The hood is almost covering the smiling figure mask, it is disturbing. It is painted in black paint and stuck to the marble surface — now cracked. Checked. But Dream remains unshaken.

Niki thinks he’s a coward, though.

"It's as quiet as ever." Dream says proudly.

"Yes, it is a pity," she says.

"I don't think so." Dream responds. "I think it's the way it was meant to be."

I want white flags!

Niki closes her eyes to hold a growl deep in her chest. She sighs, Niki lets the flame go out with controlled calm.

"You don't care about L'manburg," Niki says.

"Oh." he falls beside her, legs crossed on the floor. "You're wrong. L'manburg is all I care about.”

Niki walks away. Wet bangs on the forehead. She looks at the smiling mask with disdain. Rage. Burner. It was he who killed that nation in the first place.

“You are a tyrant. A bastard."

"I'd be careful with your next move, Niki." Niki is not an idiot. "Don't do something that you regret."

Niki closes his eyes. Sigh. It sinks the anger deep into your body.

"You smell like burning," she says.

"Well, yes, thanks for noticing." he mocked, false affection in tone. She feels more disgust than fear. “I care about L'manburg. We just have some differences of thought.”

"No more." Niki complements.

"No more." Dream says, mad with drunk pride. “I value good behavior. You understand me?"

Niki understands. Niki also understands the feeling of being underestimated. He doesn't see her as a threat, someone who could start a fire. He doesn't expect it to be her, Niki, who starts a revolution within the figurative walls of L'manburg, that she doesn't want freedom more than everyone else.

Maybe he was right. She thinks. Her whole body screams in reverse.

"You've wood in your hair." She comments, she decides not to watch when he is immediately distracted, running his burned fingers through the blond strands.

Instead, she gathers anger on the soles and leaves.


	2. She trembles.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niki arrives in Lostedshire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Graphic representation of violence; blood and wounds; representation of  
> panic attacks; and PTSD.

Tommy woke up in Lostedshire and was sure it would be a good day.

He woke up with his head out of the water, his face resting on the pillow. He had some bread leftover from the day before, in which he had hidden it from Dream — these hiding places had become more frequent, Tommy hides the guilt as well as hides food and materials under the ground.

But of course, things needed some lame excuse to fall apart. Because of course, he would receive karma for lying to his best friend, for being selfish. He started with a good day, sometimes he's just dealing with the consequences of the universe of providing him with a little comfort.

Tommy cannot see another explanation through the fog of confusion that Dream left in his brain every day.

He feels he deserves it all, by the way. How your arms burn when trying to be miserable and impulsive when trying to keep Wilbur's coat. Wilbur died because of him because Tommy was selfish and spoiled and he didn't deserve to have a memory of his older brother, even if it was that memory that gave him stomach pain and nightmares at night.

But, shit, it hurts more than the marks of aggression on his skin when he watches Wilbur's patched old overcoat burn at the hands of the person he most admires, Dream.

And Tommy begs until his throat is dry. Even when he knows he doesn't deserve the least empathy.

He was having a good day.

Now he is lying down and probably bleeding from a crater in the ground. Tommy fantasizes that he's on the 16th, is that he can hear the Withers buzzing in the skies. Intimidating and deadly. It's more comforting really.

Tommy doesn't remember why he started bleeding, it happens sometimes. Dream is still here?

Heaven is crying because of him.

“Toms, you can't stay up until this time in the morning. We have work to do tomorrow! Eret is going to help us raise the walls, he plans to arrive early, so go to bed now. I can sing for you, you child. ”

Tommy watches the sky cry, the humming and humming over the noise of thunder and smoke.

And just as Wilbur's unmistakable voice asked, Tommy sleeps.

* * *

There is broken obsidian, crumbling beside her. Deconstructing itself as she returns to the world of the living being. The portal blinks, the purple mist dissipating in the air. Niki comes out of the volcanic stone platform, then the portal breaks in the dust. Particles becoming just a disposable memory. So unreal that she couldn't touch it, even if she wanted to.

The destruction of the portal is just one more sign that she received that something was about to break. A premonition of destruction. She wonders if this is how Wilbur felt when Schlatt took office. The vision of chaos. The feeling that nothing would be like before.

Then she goes back to the world. With your back to purgatory.

Your first visit to Logstedshire.

His entire walk was a blur of blue, red, and green. Niki held her anger on the soles, let it spill over, she carried the sword with the bravery she refused to have during the war. Because with Wilbur she could refrain from words, enough of a tremendous battle on the tongue. But Wilbur was no longer here, she no longer has enough reason to fight morally. She doesn't know why she is holding on, so tight, chains dragging her to the center.

L'manburg's walls are very high, even if they are not in sight.

Then she sees herself again in the clearing, and like the rain, her heart is calmed.

She drags her fingers through the bark of the tree, and suddenly everyone is not the same, she arrives to be received, to be welcomed, by the warm breeze of a summer day in L'manburg, the sound of a guitar daring to seek a new melody,

Wilbur never received a real grave. Schlatt received his funeral as one of the presidents of L'manburg. But not Wilbur, who was seen as a madman, a thug. According to the State, he did not deserve the respect of being seen as a founder. As the reason for the existence of a nation.

For Tommy, the story was different.

_("We should give him a tree."_

_"What?"_

_"A tree," Tommy says. "He would like to have a tree.")_

Tommy was a cold representation of anger. Still, it was a snowstorm. Tommy was kind in his way, loving, and very, very loyal. In such a way that adults believed that their dedication would lead to decline. But she and Wilbur thought that was what allowed him to keep going up. Tommy would conquer the world with sweat on his forehead and dirt in his hands, and he would still stand proudly on a stage. On his own podium.

It was an avalanche of dexterity, passion, and dedication to what he believes. She remembers that, even after he was so close to death after the duel when he faced a masked reaper, a god of his territory, he still had a smile.

And two weeks after Tommy defied death and lost, he came home with the declaration of independence.

And while Wilbur was a fire of words, a volcano erupting within the soul, of ideals, morals, and values. Tommy was a figurative storm, fearful of the unsuspecting, inviting, and just as careful.

When Niki discovered that Wilbur was dead, she felt herself dying too. When she saw Tommy, two months later, for the first time, when she left rebuilding the bakery and decided to see how her best friend's unfinished symphony was reborn after her hiatus. She saw the storm shattered, contained within the blue of Tommy's eyes. Niki sees Wilbur in his eyes. Older than ever.

Then she stays, she urges Tommy to scream, to speak as loudly as he can. It opens up to him, they just talk about the first war. Quotes, stories, and everything bitter at that simpler time. Niki asked for forgiveness, so Tommy could forgive himself for L'manburg. Now, forgive L'manburg.

Even though she's sure she took the wrong approach, now. Some things cannot be forgotten. What L'manberg did to Tommy is not even close.

And in all the time she insists, that she spent hours, minutes, or days surrounding Tommy, staying in orbit. It never opens. It never breaks.

A thick layer of ice on a lake.

Water.

In different states.

At one point, when they built Wilbur's hypothetical tomb, a single tree, only what he would get from anyone else, is when Tommy speaks and she sees it as an outcome:

“I never hated my brother, Niki. I always knew that Wilbur was burning. ” Tommy sighs. "I couldn't blame you for anything."

And they didn't exchange a lot of words after that.

Niki thinks Tommy has started to avoid it. With the lack of contact, Niki focused on Fundy and, the recent inhabitant of New L'manburg, Ranboo. Consequently, she lost Tubbo too.

Everything has gone cold since then. Burning a roof. The smoke gave her nightmares for weeks, burning the sky black on a small scale. She tries to find out when it all became so brutal, but she's not sure where to start.

The smoke always marked the beginning of a war that did not live up to it.

The sweet realization that they shouldn't be fighting.

Niki was tired. And doubt that it is the only one.

So when Niki wakes up, she is leaning against Wilbur's tree. Sitting on the wet grass. Beams of golden light around the black rain-laden clouds. The storm failed to hold on to L'manburg's tropical weather. She gets up.

Niki slams his pants with his bare hands, pulling wet soil and green grass cut from the fabric. She finds herself throwing flour out of her pockets on the floor. And in a way, she feels Wilbur would laugh, be happy. Then she lets the white flour disappear from the soil with the raindrops stuck to the leaves.

Niki does not have a plan in her brain, and unlike anything, a script thought and produced repeatedly, a symphony, she follows the desire to save the only thing left from Wilbur's melodies.

So when Niki takes a harmless step back and falls into a hot crater, she recognizes the taste of explosives very well, she realizes that the smell of burning did not come from the wooden paths of the Nether scorched by lava or by the temperature itself. Not for the monsters, she killed on the way, with her palms itching in discontent.

Niki passed by the wooden path, she felt that it was not made for visitors. She wondered how long it would take for Tommy to go from exile to total isolation from any type of society. How long would it take for a tyrant to break his spirit to the dust? End with Tommy's blind determination and infectious courage?

So she kneels on the hot stone and looks at Logstedshire, a name that was etched in her mind after Ranboo's first and only visit.

("How's Tommy doing?"

_“Well… he's alive. I guess.")_

And she knows the answer:

Two months.

Logstedshire was now a steaming hot crater.

She swallows her breath, her heart beating wildly in her chest.

Suddenly, she finds herself back in L'manburg, hearing her best friend scream outrages, feathers falling from the sky through the hole in the wall. She reviews the yellow sky, a day as beautiful as the sunsets that Tommy and Tubbo shared in their special place. She feels angry because it shouldn't have been such a beautiful day when they were losing everything.

It erases the thought. Niki doesn't need, and can't, relive now.

Niki stands up on wobbly legs. Irrational fear was taking over his cracked spirit. The first thing she notices is that it is not raining, however, there is a dark cloud covering the entire coastline. Then, she calculates, that the torrential storm of L'manburg is dragging to the beach and, if the wind says something to her, it will be soon.

Second, the whole place smells of salt, of the sea, but all your senses are leading you to focus entirely and completely on the smell of gunpowder and coal.

Third, she doesn't have to think too hard to put a culprit in what happened, because she doubts heart and soul that Tommy would bring down his temporary home, the thread of stability.

But she knows who would.

Taking him out, which was put by the president to protect a child, which himself condemned.

_Green Boy._

She knows from all the office meetings that Dream was with Tommy. And, after hearing explosions wandering the landscape, from a place far away, she knows that the burned man she met today had fingers of entertainment in today's events. Because Dream was involved in every calamity in the world.

She just hopes to find Tommy alive to tell the story.

Niki wanders through the holes and craters of the destroyed city, eventually encountering a small piece of land. She stares at the wooden buildings, almost loses the ground again when she sees fabric burning, a recent fire, she holds her breath when she hears herself screaming at Fundy, the child she carried in her lap, burning the L'manburg flag. The act had more meaning when viewed from the inside. Niki created the flag, Eret built the walls. Everything has been so long that she almost can't understand how it all happened so fast. How everything has changed though in the blink of an eye.

However, it follows. She lets her skin burn when she goes through the recent burning of materials. Niki doesn't care that much about a scar. She steps recognizing the area, decorating the land, but there is nothing there to make her recognize the existence of a person. For a moment, she thinks Tommy took his things and ran away. Or that he blew himself up and his house. But she doesn't want to accept that a sixteen-year-old child would accept the death that way. Niki doesn't want to accept that maybe she was too late.

But when she finds peeled purple paint on the overturned concrete, she finds a clean area, a crater that looked like it was purposely made, that's where she finds Tommy, and she fights the bile and the tears that burn her body.

She trembles.

Tommy was lying, curled up like a ball at the bottom of the hole. The torn clothes, stained with crimson. Her body vibrates, and her hair is brown and so matted that it looks artificial.

It's surreal. It doesn't look like Tommy. Tommy is a brilliant boy who doesn't deserve to be thrown in the mud.

And there he is.

Wilbur's most precious piece dissociated in gunpowder.

Unreally knocked down.

She stops, her body shaking with fear — pure fear, dread running through her veins, at some point, she no longer felt corrupted by the war, but just a woman who ran over a puppy on the road. Tommy grumbles in agony, then he blinks, his eyes are open and not blue.

They are not blue.

They are opaque. Dried. Her whole body takes a sudden adrenaline rush, which throws her forward.

Niki loses when she starts choking on air, loses when she kneels, and only realizes the reality when Tommy cringes when she touches his head to put his face on her lap.

"Hello, darling. Tommy, can you hear me?" Niki doesn't want to look so frantic when it sounds.

Tommy doesn't respond, he grumbles, his eyes darting between her and something that Niki doesn't see. She needs to keep Tommy's contact with reality. That. One goal.

She can't get lost now either. The sky despairs with Niki.

"Toms, I need you to stay awake." And almost on purpose, Tommy blinks very, very slowly. "Tommy, can you—"

Your words die.

Niki is almost as lost as when she received the news that Wilbur is gone. Wilbur died. Wilbur killed himself. And she couldn't do anything.

Now the closest life she has to her best friend is slipping from life and Niki feels more imposing than ever.

So Niki is not sure if she is crying or the rain is falling on them.

_Tommy does not die in this story. Not today._

And the thought is so intense that it trembles.

Looking at the general state, she is not sure that Tommy would survive the cold of the night. She wraps her arms under Tommy's torso, and even when her fingers sink into raw burn wounds, the flesh is cold. It would heal horribly.

Tommy whimpers and she ignores the noise because of the constant rain that makes her healthy.

Niki almost falls backward because of the weight. It is overly light. Mortally light. Hypothermia and malnutrition are the worst possible combination.

God.

What did Dream do to this boy?

Tommy falls with his head on Niki's shoulder. The long limbs go awry when Niki's small body lifts him off the floor. Tommy doesn't have enough strength to hold her shirt, Niki deduces, but from how Tommy begins to hyperventilate when she intends to fix the grip, she's not sure Tommy wants to lose touch now.

She thinks how painful it was for Tommy, a child so in need of socializing — to get attached as strong as anyone else —, how painful it was for Tommy to isolate himself completely from anyone. Niki thinks of him, stuck with his biggest enemy, a person who probably had fun watching Tommy spin himself and clamoring for minimal contact.

Tommy lost everything he achieved in years in the blink of an eye.

Is not fair.

Niki swallows the sob in her throat and moves. The eyes struggling to see beyond the rain line and hear more than the tide of the sea rising in the background. And, deep down, all she wants is just to curl up in a corner and cry for everything she has bottled.

 _This is too much._ She decides. Is very.

She sees a crater of greater depth. Niki sees that it was a floor built underground by how the small building sways above them. And it's okay that it's not safe, all Niki thinks is that he has a shelter for their heads and that there's a remote chance that Tommy will be okay.

She crawls over there. Tommy's blood worryingly dripping on the floor, Niki is sure he will make a trail even with the storm over their heads.

And the ceiling above them is not so much. In reality, it is ridiculously small for them. But the ground is dry because of the poor cover and the depth of the crater. And it is enough for her to kneel with Tommy on her lap and be able to detach himself from him in her arms and leave him lying on the dry, hot stone that smokes with the wreckage of recent explosions.

Leaving Tommy curled up gives Niki an idea of how miserable Tommy looks.

It's painful.

The skin is pale. Tommy is dehydrated and perhaps on the verge of anemia. The clothes are torn which Niki cannot tell if he is wearing a sock or just a rag stuck to his foot.

But still just as worrying, are the marks of explosions and the bleeding cut from the base of the jaw that diagonally overlaps and shows an open cut at the base of the nose, broken cartilage showing.

Tommy is going to get an infection.

And Tommy is unconscious before she can even get a word out of him.

She feels even more pathetic when she cries for Tommy. He didn't deserve it, it's torturous, worse than death. Immoral. No matter that Dream and Tommy are enemies of war, a person with the minimum of honor could not commit such a cruel act and simply be proud of a job done.

Dream is not ashamed and Tommy paid the price.

Tommy is still sixteen, and more scarred than she will ever be.

"You'll be fine. I promise."

Tommy does not answer. But Niki decides to carve the promise in stone.

She decides to do something for Tommy's hypothermia.

She hopes and prays to all the Gods that her sweater is dry enough.

Niki pulls Tommy to a nearby wall. And Tommy doesn't even move to give any sign that he's alive; just worryingly slow breathing. She removes his shirt, white fabric sticking to blood and flesh. There is no chance that Tommy will not end up with an infection, not even the best optimist could be so oblivious.

Niki doesn't want to leave Tommy exposed for long. The ugly burn covers the belly and the back. She removes her damp sweater, automatically feeling a cold sticking to her skin, but Niki entered this life to neglect her health for the sake of someone else.

She hooks Tommy's long limbs by the long sleeves and wraps him with her knees to her chest against the wall opposite the opening.

Niki cannot do much more. She puts the child between her legs.

She will protect Tommy from the world. They were always against the world. She won't leave you like Tubbo — the thought is bitter even for her.

Niki starts to despair. She cannot even return to L'manburg, the ill-thought-out plan, and has brought nothing with her. Niki can't take care of Tommy like that when even she is so unprotected.

The question is, would she be able to sneak around L'manburg with Tommy in the luggage while Dream is waiting for checkmate?

Niki's breathing is heavy. She holds Tommy in her arms and cries into her muddy hair when Tommy groans in pain, genuine and low.

 _His eyes are not blue._ Something died inside Tommy. Now he may be going literally and she cannot save him. It's like watching Wilbur deteriorate in front of her. Again. And Niki cannot save him.

 _Do not._ It's all right. She'll be able to think of something tomorrow. When the rain is over when Tommy is hotter.

It is false even for her.

Niki feels drowned. She can't breathe.

Part of her delights that if she dies now, it will be with Wilbur; not Wilbur. Tommy.

Her grip doesn't loosen even when she passes out.

_And a few kilometers around there. Technoblade looked up at the sky a few hours ago and saw smoke._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really thought I wasn't going to finish this fanfiction — because the canon totally destroyed me and I'm SAD.  
> But, somehow, I took determination from my ass and thought: 'hey, why not finish that fanfiction you started some time ago?'. So I used my sleepy state to be able to do something remotely good (I failed, tbh)  
> I don't know if the way I wrote Nikki was clear too, the way that Wilbur's death wasn't completely overcome by her and how she sees Wilbur in every little thing on the people of L'manburg, but mainly in Tommy, and how she regards him as the closest thing she have to him.  
> I wanted to write Nikki as a character who is not only overcoming grief but is also getting tangled up with him, in how she can't get rid of the responsibility of the things who has no control. She knows she has no control, and yet she continues.  
> Part of her willingness to help Tommy comes mainly from the idea that she can't get rid of Wilbur.  
> But then again, I'm a bad author, lmao.


	3. Resilient

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thanks." Niki mumbles.
> 
> She is not paranoid enough to think the coffee is poisoned, but she still looks at the Blood God as if he wants to kill her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: panic attacks; nightmares; sickness; emetophobia.
> 
> The book is ‘People Like Us’ by Dana Mele.

"You lie too much for someone who runs a bakery, Niki."

 _“Oh._ Shut up, Wil.” Niki says.

Wilbur smiles; yellow teeth appear as soon as the tip of the chapped lips rises upwards. Wil always had that characteristic way of smiling that intrigues, it is impossible not to laugh when his lips stretched treacherously on his face, his eyes shining with a mischievous idea. The tone of his voice, confident and condescending, could convince anyone to agree with a stupid idea.

Niki has still recorded in the back of his mind everything of Wilbur, the accent, the volume of the voice, the way Wilbur smelled of smoke and cinnamon no matter the circumstance, since before he formatted the idea of a nation. When they were just two teenagers, playing, when Philza couldn't keep Wilbur's feet on the ground, he and Niki were the sellers of ideas and the makers of chaos. They had Wil's convincing perseverance and Niki's innocent, angelic appearance.

It was never difficult to get into Wil's ideas with him; theory and execution perfectly together at their own pace. First of all, they were a pair. Not allies or companions with bad memories. They were friends. Even if it meant weeks of punishment after a prank in a village, or Niki needing to clean up a church for months when they managed to persuade ten members of the cult that Wilbur knew of an incomplete prophecy in his dreams.

"I'm not kidding, Niki Nihachu," Wilbur says, but the smile on his face and the mocking tone deliver the contradiction. "Weren't you an angel or something?"

Niki smiles;

“God, you know this is not true. Lord Messiah.”

Wilbur walks almost floating through the wheat.

"That was an isolated episode." Wilbur tries to look serious, his cheeks flush in response — but the blood doesn't come up red in his face, he looks almost bluish-gray, and Niki ignores how uncomfortable it makes her.

"I don't doubt that." the mockery sounds false when she lets the words slip through her mouth.

The need to hold something with her hands or hide a little gives her the freedom to hold a mug of coffee in which Niki does not know how it appeared, but the heat evaporating from the cup brings comfort and warmth, and also the opportunity to look away. Wilbur.

Niki remembers Wilbur's other details; nothing superficial. As his custom of jumping the bottom rung of a ladder, the way he untangled his hair. In his monologues, when he opened his arms receptively as if he were stating an obvious and unquestionable fact.

And Niki consoles herself knowing that everything she remembers about Wilbur is substantial. But it is not enough. Niki does not remember his physical form correctly; she manages to form his tall and slim body, but not the ways his muscles were marked on his clothes or the small imperfections of his skin. Small running scars, calluses on the hands, and old acne marks on the face. The Wilbur she fantasizes about now looks like smooth, flawless marble.

It also attaches to the yellow and an especially grotesque sweater that was from Wilbur, never a variant; the clothes in which Wilbur blew up L'manburg and detached him.

Niki never saw Wilbur's body. She wasn't watching when Phil ran the sword over his torso, and it's an image that gets worse every time she tries to fill that hole in consciousness.

(She doesn't know what L'manburg — or _Dream_ — did to Wilbur's body.)

Just that thought makes her stomach weigh in misery, and if this place were real, she would never be able to hide her shortness of breath.

Niki never knew what Wilbur looked like when he died; his dress, his look, if Wilbur continued with his disturbingly red and bloody iris as he closed his eyes. Or Wil never closed them.

And yet, Niki doesn't remember Wilbur alive. Corrosion from the inside out. As if Wilbur was summed up in a single idea, and execution in a single ruse. She silently fought against the idea and formation of L'maburg's future, of how everyone took the concept of an Insane Wilbur, a President Wilbur, and locked it in the back of his brain. Forming a reality where Wilbur has never been. It was never a son, a brother, or the best friend that Niki ever had.

In his imagination, Wilbur turns his head too hard, too fast, his eyes disappear, because it is something that has been lost in the fog of space, and Niki cannot hold on much longer; the sick reminder that her moments of rest and vulnerability are nothing more than projections and dreams of her own traumatized brain.

And the gray-skinned Wilbur and dirty red beanie know that much more than she does.

 _"Resilient_ is the wrong word for someone who attracts tragedy like a magnet but survives to watch her loved ones die." Wilbur quotes.

Niki almost dropped the cup in sheer surprise and panic. The eyes widened out of the orbit. But she manages to concentrate enough to leave the empty mug beside her body, crushing the small plants with a gradient stem; which starts in green and ends with a warm yellow, almost lazy, if she were too tired to achieve something more vibrant; faded.

"What?"

Wilbur makes a face that she can't quite see what emotion he wants to show.

"It's a quote from a book." Wilbur spins. “I don't remember the name. But I remember that Tommy read it together with Tubbo. When Karl smuggled SMP books to L'manburg, although I don't know where he got his 'merchandise' from.”

"I'm pretty sure this book is mine, Wil." she laughs. "These children have always been little thieves."

"They learned very well from me." Wilbur, still standing, continues to watch the sun slowly go down to set. Niki was never numb enough long to see the dusk here. She wonders what it would be like to see the morning stars with Wilbur, so she wished she never had such a regulated sleep schedule when he was alive. “When you read that sentence one day, you spent almost half an hour holding the page in your fingers looking for ink and paper to write it on. So, when you found it, you hung it on the wall; our wall.”

Niki nods.

"I remember this," Niki says — Wilbur scoffs. “Tommy was not one hundred percent after the duel. Fundy was in a very heavy rejection phase. You weren't doing well watching your family deteriorate like that.”

"And why did you think you would help me?" Wilbur asks.

Niki is dizzy. Her stomach was upset and irritating, but she had no bile rising her throat, just to be a warning of her anxiety, not a state of pre-panic.

It was not a kind thing to say to someone who was going through more than age allowed. And it was cruel to anyone else, but not to Wil.

It was a certainty. A sticky _note_ pasted on the pupils that Wilbur was living to see them live.

But Niki doesn't verbalize anything.

Just shrug, the fabric of the sweater falling over his shoulder.

Wilbur doesn't even seem to put weight on the grass when he plays next to her. Sitting hunched in an unhealthy way. But then he pulls his legs up to support his elbows on his knees. Wilbur is so close that Niki can smell him. The smell of cinnamon is lost in the smell of gunpowder.

He's indescribably cold; colder than a corpse should be.

And instead of moving away, it hardens.

Niki remembers how she imagines the possibility that Wilbur himself, alive, would show up at his house one day, saying that death was a ridiculous joke, the kind he told Phil to make him mortally irritated.

Niki thought about it several times. She left the door to her house open so that if one day Wilbur decided to stop playing and return to her, he could enter without creating a big commotion.

She doesn't remember having closed the doors yet. But it is irrelevant.

"You’re very resilient." Niki grimaces bitterly.

"And what do you mean?" He looks at her, "You're leaving a lot of loose ends in your speech, Wil. It's not like you." Niki says.

The fire inside Niki gets even hotter, gradually burning her from the inside out.

It is almost induction. Wilbur had a form with the thought-provoking words, and even if it was used against others, it could be used in favor of him. The fire inside her was all that Niki felt she should be holding in her chest, she signed with Wil beside her.

Still, the sun sets slowly. The gale blows, ruffling their hair as if Wilbur was not the greatest safety haven she had.

“This isn't even real. It's not _healthy_ , Niki.” Wilbur says, exasperated. "What are you clinging to? And you keep trying to keep me alive, why?"

Wilbur is quite right; this place is not real. They are stuck in limbo; everywhere and nowhere. It looks like L'manburg, but it's a different place. A field of overgrown wheat and a clean, soothing wind, at the top of a hill, they relax while the sun neither rises nor sets; simply perfect.

But now it looks threatening. It's hot and she can't breathe.

Niki wonders how Wilbur felt when he begged to die (according to Phil, who looked morbidly at the floor and told her as if he had been reading a script: Wilbur seemed very grateful to die) if he ever regretted it.

A selfish part questions whether Wil thought of her while life was taken prematurely from him. Whether he thought of Tommy, Tubbo, or if he was just a shell of himself.

Niki prefers the Wilbur she remembers, the loving, passionate, and completely willing one more day.

And Niki wanted another day with Wil. And another. Again. She wants to live here until the rest of the years she has if that means having more seconds where Wilbur lives.

"I’m fine." Niki lies.

"You not." the dismissive gesture burning the tone, intentionally provocative; Niki can't look at him. She doesn't know if she could remember her face if she looked at Wil now. “You focus on the wrong problems; you make mistakes to pretend to be altruistic. You want to help Tommy for a lying reason.”

"I want to help Tommy!" Niki whimpers

"I know." He calms down. "But because he looks like Wilbur."

 _"You._ You are Wilbur.” it is an appeal; a desperate request to hold on to that piece of reality.

It's a chance. Her lucid dreams were flowing water from a river, but now things are becoming too real for her to take, Niki needs to hold on to the gesture of familiarity, forget what she did to the real Wil, that her actions had more consequences than that they deserved. But now they have placed a barrier in the stream, the dam has been formed.

They are just leaking all over the place.

Wilbur looks so disappointed. So disappointed with _her;_ is painful on merit.

"You know this is not true." Sigh. “It’s not true." Wilbur echoes. “I know you better than yourself; I know that remembering me destroys you more than it gives you strength. And I don't want you to die.”

Niki doesn't want to die. But it looks better than having this conversation.

She wants to throw up on the floor. He wants to scream at the top of his lungs. He wants to destroy L'manburg stone by stone. He wants to go back in time and bring Wilbur back when they destroyed public property and made cupcakes and bread in Phil's wood oven.

She wants to save Tommy.

Niki cannot stop the guilt of leaving Wil before the war, not being there during it; when the black feathers still did not bleed across the sky.

She doesn't feel strength without Wilbur. Wil was a vital force, a complementary part of his soul.

Wilbur has been dead for months and still looks fresh. It still seems unreal. He's everywhere she looks.

He puts one hand weighing on top of Niki's head. She looks at him, huddled.

“But it doesn't mean that you are going to get rid of me so easily, Miz Nihachu. I will not be eliminated from the history if you start to live yours.” her best friend says, it seems easy for him.

She ignores the cold and lays her head on Wilbur's lap. It is as cold as a thousand winters. But she doesn't care, and the skin-to-skin feeling is something Niki can't feel, it's like touching a soap bubble, but she needs a little comfort, even if it's essentially fake;

Wilbur runs his fingers through his straight hair, which is not faded or oily here. Niki is neglecting herself in the hope of looking stronger, though it is much more tiring and demotivating. But here, she feels happy, complete, satisfied.

Niki needs Wil, just a little while longer, she can't let him die when she is alone; when it's all she has.

The sun slowly descends in the sky, a star beginning to stain the canvas of the space that surrounds them.

"What could I do to make you hate me?" Wilbur asks.

Suddenly. Tearing. Brutally genuine.

"To die." Niki lies.

Niki wakes up thinking that, really, in addition to resilient. She is dishonest.

And it is the constant walking and the occasional frost that welcomes the conscience.

With a choked sigh, Niki notices that he still trembles, his body convulsing with silent, random sobbing spasms that rock his body. It's cold as hell, and for a moment she thinks Wilbur's icy lap is still lying. However, she has a sense of reality and fantasy to be able to recognize the traces of the dream leaving her. The wind and the comforting warmth getting rid of the skin just leaving the feeling of numbness in the after-panic fog that is familiarly nauseating.

But the swinging doesn't stop. Her eyelids appear to have been glued together with hot glue. There are traces of frozen tears on the cheeks so that the gusts of wind seem to cut the skin little by little. Her arms seem frozen in the cold, hanging by her side, yet her shoulders and chest are covered with something hot and heavy. His body is at the mercy of the constant movement of walking that is not Niki's; and copper exhaust everywhere.

Niki's part is still running on adrenaline. Another innocent part wonders why it is so cold in his little bakery.

Niki's entire bakery was boiling. The place was small and cozy; all due to the constant and unstoppable production of bread and sweets; both during the war and outside.

The repetition and routine exercise took Niki's stress out of the process. And during the two months or so that Niki was in total denial of grief — part of which she knows she _still is_ — she made more batches of pasta than ever before. She had to distribute food to both L'manburg and Dream SMP, even in the period when she was unable to look Tubbo in the eye for leaving Phil free, without consequences.

(Although she misses Tubbo a lot; it’s a controversial effect. Tubbo was acting like a president — _he's still a kid_ — and Niki can't see anything good coming out of it. Wil made adult mistakes, paid like no one would deserve, and Niki still loves him.)

She got used to the heat of the ember, got used to working in the Nether almost by choice; the sooty feeling in his arms was comforting. L'manburg, too, was a naturally warm place, being a coastline. The country's winters were rainy and humid, and at most, they wore some hooded sweatshirts and fuzzy scarves to protect themselves from the freezing gusts that came with the tide.

(The coldest place she remembers was the ravine of Pogtopia.)

This cold climate is nothing that she has ever experienced; much less how the gale passed through the open doors in the middle of the night. She cannot feel the tip of her nose and the tips of her fingers.

Opening her eyes is even more complicated; they look disgusting and stick to themselves. The world is blurry and monochromatic when it blinks. The brain begins to assimilate past and present, reality and fantasy. Niki's body is still too heavy and too soft to do anything about.

When the tears that have been gathered in the closed eyes finally fall, she sees white.

She sees snow and flakes falling from the sky, falling on her hair, on her face; in everything that is exposed.

Niki's brain is a balanced switch. The moment she watches numbly a single snowflake descending to the ground, slow and concise, everything lights up. She feels like gasoline has been poured over her and a lighted match has been lit. The heat destroys it. She remembers Tommy, Logstedshire, and her ridiculously hopeful thoughts.

God, how did she expect to go to an overturned place without a plan and simply kidnap a child of abuse from the literal server owner? This whole war thing is taking her neurons out, and with all due respect to Tubbo's vice president, even Quackity would have a slightly smarter plan.

 _("HEY!" she can hear Quackity complaining._ )

She lifts her body with a racing heart. Looking everywhere and just seeing the blanket that covers the earth, lack of coloring everywhere. She just knows that they moved again just because of the rocking sensation. Snow is a death machine for unsuspecting people.

And that person is Niki, who doesn't even know how he got here.

She looks down to find an armored horse. Smooth and clean diamond armor; she was lying with her head on the clean mane. It's too extravagant to be a L'manburg horse, which is comforting in a way that she doesn't like.

The animal snorts in disgust, and she changes the weight so that the position doesn't put too much pressure on it.

She's wearing the shirt she was wearing under her sweater — at least a memory that makes sense since she gave Tommy something warm to wear. But she feels the hot weight slip over her shoulder.

A blue cover;

Niki's neck spins and pops; certainly in a very rusty and worrying way.

And, we'll be fair, Niki expected many people to drag them into the snow; perhaps some citizens of L'manburg at best. Dream at worst. But The God of Blood was nowhere near one of the options.

"You talk while you sleep," Techno says vaguely. Not even looking at her

She hoped to find Techno at some point. In case she lost her mind and simply wanted some organized chaos or found Techno in the middle of a public performance in L'manburg's courtyard. And in all his thoughts and suggestions, he would look stunning, unshakable. Perhaps because that was the only Technoblade face she has ever seen; the expressionless and unflappable Technoblade.

But now she is gaping. He looks completely casual and domestic.

He is without his usual crown, his hair is tied in an untidy braid, which leaves the pink strands escaping his forehead, but he does not seem too bothered by it. He's wearing a light blue sweater. Not one of the great covers — right now, he reasons that _Niki_ is wearing one of the Technoblade covers — but rather, just long sleeves made of warm fabric, to keep the body warm; soiled sweatpants and high boots to be able to walk in the snow.

An impeccable Netherite axe hangs from his belt. But Niki focuses only on the worn jeans legs wrapped around Techno's waist.

The feeling of being shot at close range remains.

"Tommy." Niki voices.

Techno rocks the trunk a little. Inside his coat, blond hair is born from a lump on his back. Looking like a child trying to prank someone else with the help of his older brother — the thought makes Niki sad but warms her heart anyway.

Techno is unquestionably Tommy's older brother.

“You didn't do a good job trying to warm it up, by the way. What you gave him to use was wet. If I didn't know you better, I would say that you were trying to kill him from hypothermia to a degree faster.” Techno says.

She shrugs. Techno doesn't seem very judgmental, however. He acts like he's trying to hide that he's being vulnerable.

Niki doesn't know if she can trust Techno, her brain is still slow and confused.

He is the son of Phil, a warrior against the whole idea of L'manburg. And loyal to what he believes _(like Tommy)_ to the unthinkable.

Niki didn’t have many opportunities to meet Technoblade, even though she grew up with Wilbur as a teenager, Niki met Wil when Techno made increasingly long trips and adventures, until the day he, Wilbur, and Phil received a letter written on Technoblade's italic calligraphy, talking about his names and greatness, but mainly that he would never return home.

Phil became even more distant. Wilbur became even more active in any activity that kept him away from home, and much more attached to little Tommy when Tommy arrived for the family.

Techno has always had all the support and freedom to go. Wilbur was condemned to stay.

There is probably some Freudian reason for L'manburg's existence. But does it matter at this point in the championship?

Instead of answering, she just asks:

"Where are we?" She strokes the horse's mane, which seems satisfied with the affection.

"Eh—" Techno hesitates "Far away."

"No shit." she scoffs. A lot slow for tactical reasoning.

“Look, I'm being nice here. And I definitely don't want any of the fools from L'manburg to get close to where I live.”

Having someone else to speak ill of L'manburg is comical, she likes it more than she admits.

"If your problem is L'manburg, don't worry about it too much because of me," Niki speaks, convinced.

"And is that _because_...?" Techno asks.

"I made some bad choices," Niki replies.

Niki looks at Technoblade to find his gaze wandering in the snow. She still doesn't see anything ahead, although Techno's home can be anywhere and nowhere. She has no idea how far they have walked to reach a tundra biome, but because Techno has completely disappeared into the air, she considers that they are far from L'manburg, but close enough to reach Logstedshire on horseback and not the boat.

"I can't say that I think they are bad," Techno says.

Niki shrugs.

"I can't say that I regret it either." she agrees. "How did you find us?"

“I saw smoke coming from Tommy's exile. We are in the middle of a snowstorm and I found it a little too chaotic. I was also bored.”

Niki smiles; she is proud to notice the small imperfections in Techno's speech, how he hides his concern amid sarcasm _. (She can get used to it.)_

"Always an older brother, _Blade."_ she causes. Techno snorts.

"I preferred it when you were sleeping."

“Oh. I’m sorry." Niki scoffs.

She grew up with Wilbur, being afraid of the God of Blood is not something she does.

But it seems that Techno is surprised for other reasons, eyes glazed for a second. A cynical smile grows on him soon after.

"I can do this for you."

"No." Niki laughs, she intends to sound a little scared to feed Techno's ego. "— No thank you. I feel like a horse ran over me and I'm not in the mood for another fight.”

"This is what panic attacks and nightmares do to you." it is somber, in the most sarcastic way that it is possible to contain in a tone. "Don't get used to it." Techno indicates, pointing at the horse and she smiles with humor.

And if the fire inside her feels more cozy than threatening, she lets it take over, because if she wants to stab someone, she can do it with Technoblade.

She throws her weight on the horse's neck. The animal snorts but continues its course.

Closing her eyes, she can feel minimally safe. Not exposed to all possible sides. If Techno wanted to kill her, he would have done it without much effort and wouldn’t save that much time.

Tommy didn't move a single time in the entire time she was awake.

Niki sleeps with that.

How did she get here?

Niki thinks while holding a mug of hot coffee, wrapped in very warm comforters and the blaze of the Technoblade fireplace; miles away from L'manburg, or the traumatic destruction of Logstedshire and far away and unaware of any governmental confusion that could be going on at the heart of the SMP.

(Because kidnapping a child who was, in one way or another, under state security, has consequences; and what she learned from the country's presidents and Dream, is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.)

She has a thousand thoughts per second as she watches Tommy, small and shaky, with a damp towel on his forehead and twice as many blankets as she does. Tommy looks more alive now, less pale, now a black eye appears much more strikingly than before, as it is only now that she notices.

Niki tries to forget all of Tommy's scars and thinks how much easier it was to wake up a second time

She was abruptly interrupted from her nap with a shove. Niki almost fell off the horse, but she has survived three wars and it is not possible to do this without having enough reflexes not to fall after a nap.

“I know I told you to sleep, but— I mean, if you plan on staying on my horse, I’ve no problem with leaving you outside.

"Tommy?" Niki mumbles.

She sits without any problems. However, she imagines how tiring it must be to carry it for minutes or hours on end. Even so, she wipes the tiredness out of her eyes with her fingers. Techno has little snow in her hair, she is drier than before, even though the cold takes over her bones and seemed to break them in the middle, however it is dark over her head, he wears one of the capes and Niki realizes it was his previous blanket. Techno is trying to look more formal now.

She doesn't see her legs running around Techno's waist, not even a tuft of dirty hair rising from the top of her head.

"Okay, I'm having déjà-vu." Techno says. Niki gets off the horse with a practical jump. "I put Tommy inside, then I remembered _'hey, there's a completely unknown person sleeping in Carl'_ , so we're here again."

Techno looks uncomfortable, he ran his hands over his muzzle and snapped his neck, taking steps backward while Niki grimaces and advances the body closer.

Techno is a moral and highly lethal warrior, no matter what position of coexistence they are installed in now. Having him so vulnerable as well as being comical is also an advantage for her.

Niki reaches for the belt where the hem is, only to find the case empty. She hopes to be subtle enough that he doesn't notice the minimal action, but something in Technoblade's red gaze that says not even the most cautious of humans could hide a defensive gesture from him.

Niki thinks, she is in the middle of the tundra, away from any nearby location she recognizes, attacking the man who pulled her out of the rain does not seem very fair.

"What's his name?" Niki asked, stroking the animal that starts to lie under his feet.

The dark wooden roof seems to warm up the small stable, as there is a warm climate due to the diagonal angle of the snow, where they are surrounded by a fence of the same dark wood material. The horse lies in the hay scattered on the ground; and it’s a little wet, it just looks damp on her boots, but it’s cozy anyway. The wooden planks are all connected to the support beam that jumps from the white wall of the house.

"Tommy," Techno says.

"The horse's name _, Blade,_ for god's sake," Niki exclaims.

Calling Techno ‘Blade’ is more of a moral provocation than a solid nickname. Notwithstanding, there were few times when Tommy called him Techno; then it quickly became Blade. Blood God; her personal favorite was when Wilbur called him Potato _‘Boi’_ , with pride in his eyes and provocations on the tip of his tongue about his younger brother's clear competitiveness.

_("Techno is the oldest for twelve seconds." Wilbur said._

_"You’re literally twenty-four, Wil," Niki answered._

_Niki took advantage of this for a long time, even though she was only a year younger than Wil and two years older than Techno.)_

_“Oh._ My horse; his name is Carl.” Techno responds. "How do you expect me to differentiate everyone involved in the conversation?"

"Karl?" Niki asks.

“Not Karl. _Carl.”_ Techno says.

"Oh," Niki replies.

The silence is uncomfortable.

Techno standing and Niki kneeling in the hay, with _Carl_ forcing his snout into her hand and taking advantage of the affection; in a way, she can feel Techno's jealousy when he stomps his foot on the hay and crosses his arms — although it seems completely unintentional, just a bodily impulse. She turns away concerning Techno's privacy.

He looks almost relieved and surprised, eyes widened slightly.

Niki tries not to think about how many times Techno's privacy has been breached before — and failed.

It's a shiver that runs through Niki's entire body that brings out the magnitude of the situation.

"Well," Techno begins, "— you can have that part of the hay," he says.

"I want to see Tommy," Niki says.

Techno turns his back. It is strange to think how tall he looks than he did a year ago, in the middle of the Pogtopia revolution, but it seems related to how tense his posture is. He opens the gate and the fluffy snowfalls as the passage moves. Carl doesn't even move, looking comfortable in the position he settled in. Niki watches Techno's broad back disappear in the middle of the storm, even though it is a pink flash spotted with blue.

And for a moment she _believes_ that she will be left in the stable until a voice and a silhouette is exposed:

 _“Ahem._ Are you coming or…?”

Niki goes on without question this time.

Leaving the stable looks like a fatal mistake when she moves away from the wooden cover because she is attacked by a dry blizzard sticking to her face; Niki sneaks through the concrete walls. Her shoulder rubs against the paint, and she can't find Techno anywhere in front of her.

Niki crawls until she reaches the edge of the wall, where she encounters a dark staircase and a tall banister that appears to have been cleaned against snow recently, even though she can see the solid, slippery layer of ice. She leans on the banister, too dizzy to suddenly stand up alone; she goes up the stairs almost slipping on the ice.

The door is half-open, Niki clumsily throws herself against it, hitting the wood behind it with the weight of her body. Her vision darkens with such light thrown over her eyes, only now noticing how dark the world was before.

The hot air is seeping into her body too quickly to be healthy. She feels all the carbon dioxide coming out of her cold lungs; she swallows the hot oxygen, which makes her anxious for a few seconds before relaxing. Her body shakes, which are a good sign since they just came out of the snow and the temperature of the world here, must be below 17.6 **° F.**

Opening her eyes is a struggle for a few seconds with the black vision at the edges, but she squeezed her temples and concentrated on Techno, holding a mug of black coffee close to her face.

Niki blinks this time, a little surprised by the care, but Techno looks at her indifferently — which looks fake — and shrugs.

"Thanks." Niki mumbles.

She is not paranoid enough to think the coffee is poisoned, but she still looks at the Blood God as if he wants to kill her.

Gripping the steaming mug is a bit nostalgic, and part of it doesn't know if it was a recurring thing in the past or just a dream that the brain started to erase the records. But it's good for her hands, which shiver with cold.

"No problem," Techno says.

He walks away, leaving the cover on the nearby sofa, stretching his tense body.

Techno's home is cozy, but the smell of smoke and carcass makes her tense and anxious, she recognizes the smell of the Nether strongholds at unimaginable distances, but the odor only attracts the noise of explosions, as if they walked with each other. However, everything seems too homely to be the home of a war criminal wanted.

The first floor is not so spacious, the wooden beams and rustic windows are sides by side. Below the first window, there is a two-seater sofa, which is exposed to a chest of chests. A solid white concrete wall divides this space throughout the kitchen's journey. The wall boundary is perfectly fitted to the kitchen island. She sees the wooden backless stools and a much wider sofa in front of her. Her feet are on a blue carpet sewn with wool, starting to get soaked by snow melting in the heat.

Niki doesn't know where that puff of hot heat comes from, since to his left there is only a ladder and an armchair. The way the staircase on the left leads upwards and the one on the right downwards, Niki thinks Techno may have managed to make a heating system under her feet.

She takes off her shoes. The wet boots make a noise every time she moves, leaving pieces of snow melting in the middle of the carpet. Her socks are cold and dry in a natural way that made them cold as ice.

Under Techno's gaze, she removes her socks and stands barefoot on the wooden floor, which silently creaks under her weight.

"I probably can't take this here," Niki says, still holding the cup in her hands.

“I didn't poison or anything. I’m retired man.” Techno speaks bored and disappointed.

Niki decides to save the information from the retired Techno for later.

“My problem is not to be poisoned. I can tell you that I've taken worse things.” Niki smiles mischievously, none of them can deny that Wilbur's iced tea was completely horrendous to the human palate — she kind of misses Wil's food "But taking hot content right after being on the verge of hypothermia is not healthy."

"Why?"

The sheer confusion in Blade's tone makes her laugh, and she can see his face burn.

"Because when you ingest some hot substance or take a bath in hot water it can make the body go into shock because of the drop and the temperature rise." Niki formulates, Techno observes her in a way that she cannot classify, and makes her uncomfortable.

"All right, so what do we do?”

Techno is a practical person, and from the stories she has heard, she is sure that Technoblade never had any hypothermia. He is a closed man, who has certainly never taken care of a child before, even though he is properly Tommy's brother. This service was passed on to Phil, and then to Wilbur when Phil left.

Wilbur left too, on his way to the SMP, with an eleven-year-old child on his lap and little luggage.

“We have to increase the body temperature before anything. In severe hypothermia, people can have cardiac arrests.” Niki says, " _Mostly_ hypotensive people,"

She knows that Tommy has low blood pressure, and hopes that Techno does too. Hypotension, malnutrition, and hypothermia (in addition to injuries that would infect very quickly) were the combination of death.

Niki is paranoid if we want to talk like that. Anxiety had grown in her core since she had to look after Fundy when he was just a small child, and they had no recourse, months after the end of the first war, they were still recovering from the wreckage. Fundy got a fever; he started hallucinating, fantasizing and slept for weeks. Something changed in Niki at that time, physically and physically, when the whole truth they lived fell on her shoulders. And she swore she wouldn't let it happen again.

That made her a voracious reader; she stole more Punk books than was credible. And although she likes teen fiction and any nonsense that takes her out of reality for hours on end, she was still a companion to the theoretical medical books that Karl brought from off the server.

Niki's part calls her selfish and judges her for weak thinking. After all, Wilbur's brother is here, hurt and sick, and she hasn't made a move to save him before; sunk until the ankles on the well of self-judgment.

_(What is more than guilt, considering she just wants to help Tommy for a futile reason?)_

Niki pushes intrusive thoughts away from the front of the brain, closing her eyes tightly so she can pretend they are not tormenting her.

"Do you have extra blankets?" Niki asks.

Techno nods, staring at Niki fervently. He points to the sofa in front of her and goes up the stairs.

She goes in front of the sofa, leaving the coffee cup on the glass coffee table, Tommy is stretched out on his back with purple lips, with the red Techno cape covering him like a thick blanket.

Tommy is wearing only his underwear and his limbs are bandaged, she sighs with relief that Techno is healing at least the bruises that she would not be so successful. Most of the bruises she has seen before are covered, and there is dried blood, which she tries to clean with the tip of her white T-shirt, peeling off the skin.

Niki notices the choking noise before actually hearing it, his instincts take his arms running up to Tommy's abdomen, and turn him on his side. He vomits sadly beside her on the floor and in her pants, just stomach bile. Niki wonders how long it has been since Tommy had a meal. A real meal, not just the snacks he made during the war.

Niki wished she could have punched Dream when she saw him in L'manburg. She wished she had killed him with her bare hands during the first war, had the same pleasure he had while actively making Tommy's spirit break.

She will never really understand the love these boys have for L'manburg. Much less she will understand Wilbur and Tommy's unconditional admiration for freedom. She knows all the stories of the rising sun behind the walls; the security and independence of the place.

Wilbur fight to his death; Tommy is dying because of the others' fight.

"Do you prefer to be free or happy?" Wilbur asked her one day.

"I don’t know," Niki replies.

Wilbur looks forward, proud and admired, as he watches Tommy, Tubbo, and Fundy play in the rubble of Dream's explosions.

"I do," Wilbur says.

Niki wonders if he has interpreted the answer correctly. They are neither free nor happy at this point. The memories of L’manburg’s walls seem much larger than they really should be.

Schlatt did not collapse a prison, he destroyed history.

Niki doesn't know if this is something they can change or fix. L'manburg died with Wilbur, and they cannot bring the history back.

But for now, she lets a smile come out while running her fingers through Tommy's dirty hair.

"You'll be fine. I promise you.” Niki whispers.

"I brought the blankets."

Niki jumps. She holds a curse out of her fright until she looks at Techno.

He holds a bucket and clothes in one arm, many blankets in the other, and a bottle of water in hand.

"Good." Niki smiles "Fine, give me the clothes."

Techno delivers it to her. Niki almost tears when she recognizes a striped sweater that Wilbur had when they were teenagers, which clearly wouldn't fit Tommy, the baseball shirt from Tommy, and sweatpants without an owner.

She smiles at Techno, who looks indifferent.

They change Tommy's clothes with a little embarrassment; Niki raises his head so that he can put some water on Tommy's body, and hope that his stomach can hold him for a while.

Tommy chokes from the angle, coughing his lungs out. Niki whispers words of comfort; Tommy's eyes look a little bright when he opens them, which relieves Niki's demons a little, even when he closes his eyes again.

_'He'll be fine.'_

Techno, on the other hand, seems more relieved that he is not in the sentimental work of the situation.

"Why did you bring the bucket?" Niki asks.

"I thought he was going to throw up." Techno shrugs his shoulders.

"I think he already did that, Techno."

_"Bruh,"_

Niki laughs.

"You have clothes that can I wear?"

"No."

"I need to change my pants." Niki takes the cup of coffee in his hands, it's getting cold, but Niki swallows it all at once. She doesn't plan to sleep tonight.

"I have a shower upstairs," Techno says, eyes focused on Tommy. “You can get a new towel. I left your ugly coat and sword in my room.”

"He's not ugly!" Niki exclaims. She's just instigating a dispute, honestly.

"You look like a rainbow," Techno says, humor leaking from the tone. "I can lend you some of my pants, as long as Tommy doesn't throw upon it."

Niki realizes that Techno is a bit like Tommy, but it is not uncomfortable in the way that she thought it would bother.

"I'll be right back."

Niki leaves the cup back on the coffee table. Following the stairs, she notices that it looks a lot like an attic. Diagonally descending, looking claustrophobic, as it is a single corridor without many doors.

It opens in an empty room. After that, find the Technoblade room. Her sword rests beside the bed, so comfortable that it looks like she never left. Niki decides that there is no point in using it now.

Niki finds his coat on a furnace with the faint flame burning. It smells like embers.

The fabric is hot. Niki takes a bath just as hot and does not focus on the sad reflection that she finds in each of the reflections. Niki used one of Techno's shampoos and conditioners that she has no idea where Techno managed to find them so far from any civilization.

She used one of the perfumes to ward off the smell of fire that stuck to her in every pore.

Technoblade pants would fit two if needed, so she ties the fabric itself. It is still wide, but not enough to fall from the waist.

She descends the stairs carefully and quietly. Niki spends a few seconds mesmerized by the Techno scene next to Tommy, his head resting on his younger brother's chest as if he wants to make sure Tommy's heart is still beating.

But Tommy's fingertips are still blue, and she needs to know Tommy's average body temperature to be able to control the disease.

"Techno," Niki mutters, embarrassed. Techno moves away as if affection were some kind of freak of nature. Niki smiles reassuringly. "do you have any thermometers that we can use?"

Techno clears its throat.

"I— I think I’ve got a mercury thermometer."

"Mercury is a highly carcinogenic metal." Niki comments.

"I think hypothermia kills faster than cancer in this situation," Techno says with sarcasm built into the tone.

"Perhaps," Niki agrees. "Let's just try not to kill him accidentally."

“If we fail we can find another orphan."

Niki laughs.

Tommy's temperature was still low. But she was making rapid progress.

Hypothermia would be resolved in a few more hours; the fever would be a problem for later when the weak organism starts asking for help.

"We can only wait," Niki tells Techno.

For now, Niki sits on a war criminal's couch, with another cup of coffee in his hands, wondering how things got there at this point of collision. Techno put firewood in the fireplace, in the storage below them, just to have something to do with his hands. Niki wonders if Dream has finally found out that Tommy has disappeared, or if L'manburg is starting searches for her. A voice in the back of the brain says they shouldn't be worried about it, but it's too muffled. Another voice says that she is right there, surrounded by old acquaintances and family in a way.

"When are you leaving, anyway?" Techno appears the voice muffled under the stairs.

Niki _was_ going to answer. But a breathless sob interrupts her, not the insecurity itself.

Tommy starts to struggle, weakened by the heavy blankets over his thin body. Niki doesn't realize he was standing next to Tommy, but he only comes back to reality when he hears the glass shards of the mug sparkling on the floor late.

"Tommy?" Niki calls, Tommy's eyes are full of tears and his mouth is open, asking for air. But the fluff that covers Tommy's eyes is reminiscent of Fundy's eyes in his delirious state against high fever. “Toms, I'm here. Can you hear me?"

"Where's the coat?" Tommy's cracked voice is painful even for her, Niki has the impression that Tommy would be screaming if it weren't for the lack of use. "Where is it? Please. _Please_. I need Wil's coat.”

Niki feels herself starting to cry, her breath catching on her chest at the mention of Wilbur. Empathy for Tommy hurts; she tries to silence him with words. Works better than they expected.

She can breathe again. Tommy being lulled into unconsciousness while Niki throws her affection at him, in the only way she knows.

"Oh..." Tommy says, suddenly. "You burned it, didn't you?"

"Who burned what, Tommy?" Techno asks from afar. She can almost feel the need for Techno to have a name on the culprit list.

“Dream, you burned it,” Tommy mumbles and sleeps.

When Wilbur is needed, Niki leaves. She won’t make the same mistake double times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ages: Wilbur dies with twenty-four years old, Nikki has twenty-three and Techno has twenty-one.
> 
> _Disclaimer: Techno’s house is bigger than it is in canon. ‘Cause, c’mon, they need SPACE_
> 
> Funfact: Nikki doesn't know that Dream and Techno worked together at some point on November 16th.  
> I'd to divide this chapter in two, because if it wouldn't be too big even for me, I ended up getting a little involved; but what can i say? I really like Nikki's dynamics with the SBI.  
> Speaking of which, I read two books while writing this: People Like Us and _Armadilhas da Mente (Mind Traps)_ which is a psychology book, so my writing was completely influenced by the difference in the two languages. One moment Nikki is laughing at the orphan joke, the next Nikki's head is saying: _hello you selfish bitch :)_  
>  In fact, I tried to leave Techno in character, but I feel like I failed.  
> I had a lot of work writing this, but it was fun.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, in this universe, Tommy is badly hurt after Dream's explosion. Nikki is really very emotionally compressed and she surrenders to anarchy.  
> The timeline it's written differently, and the age of the characters was changed to fit the plot, as well as the appearance of some of them. For example: L'manburg's first war took a few years, Tommy started with twelve and ended the war with fifyteen. Pogtopia had been one year and three months of exile and Tommy was now sixteen; and Nikki was covocade to L'manburg to help Wilbur with Tommy, after the duel.  
> There is no respawn in the story, and Ghostbur is not canonical. ALSO, IF I CAN'T HAVE MY COMFORT, I'LL DO BY MYSELF!!!


End file.
